Athens in 1912 is on the brink of war, in this third novel in the series. Venizelos, the new Greek prime minister, has a dream: tired of living under the crumbling Ottoman Empire, he wants to form a new nation, uniting all the Greek people scattered around the Mediterranean. Britain, however, would rather let sleeping dogs lie. Or cats—particularly the exiled former Sultan's, who was poisoned. Incendiary rumors fly about whether the ex-Sultan himself is the next target, so the Foreign Office sends Seymour to quietly find the truth and quash the rumors pronto. Set in British embassies and consulates around the Mediterranean in the years before World War I, the books in this intriguing and witty historical mystery series follow the undercover investigations of Sandor Seymour of the Foreign Office's Special Branch.